F Paul Wilson - Secret History 02 (25 page)

           
Empty even when he was here.
Especially
when he was here.

           
Time for a change.

           
Right. Easy to say.
Could
he change?

           
Yes. Because he wanted to. The
incident in the Plaza had changed his perspective. On everything. As if some
inner clock had begun tolling childhood's end. It was time to get involved in
something besides finding that latest hot bistro on Columbus Avenue. Time to
grow up. Time to begin sharing his life. He was aware of a growing need, a deep
yearning for someone else, not just to share his apartment, but his life.

           
Maybe Kara Wade was the answer. She
needed somebody, he could tell. And he was drawn to her. Maybe he should
concentrate on her. He could help her. Really help. Maybe she would be drawn to
him as a result. That would be nice. But even if it didn't turn out that way,
maybe he could do something for her. Something that mattered.

 
 

           
Kara awoke in her own bed in her own
house with the predawn light filtering through the frost on her own bedroom
window. It was great to be back home.

           
She hopped out of bed and padded
across the cold bare planks of the floor to look out at the farm.
Her
farm. She rubbed the rime away and
watched the rows of scotch pines on the south slope taking shape in the growing
light. She opened the window and thrust her head and shoulders out into the
cold, still air.

           
The morning was hers. For these few
minutes she owned it. No one was stirring except her. You couldn't do this in
New York. She'd tried when she was there. She'd stayed up all night and she'd
risen before the sun, but she'd never had the city to herself. Before the last
of the all-night party people had gone home, the city's swarms of delivery
trucks were up and out and clattering along the streets.

           
But here at the farm the morning was
all hers. And someday, when she paid it off, the farm would be all hers as
well. She hungered for that day.

           
She closed the window and rubbed her
hands together, glad she had the weekend to whip this place into shape and get
a little work done on her book. Come Monday morning Jill would go back to
school and Kara back to her job at the hospital. It was time to put the
ugliness of Kelly's death behind them and get their lives back on track.

           
She glanced over at the Apple II+ on
the writing table. She had bought it second hand as a word processor for her
book and it was calling to her now. And well it should. The publisher had
refused to authorize an extension of her deadline. They had the book scheduled
for next spring's line up and didn't want to change their plans. She had to get
cracking.

           
But she'd been having trouble with
the chapter on abortion. Intellectually, she was pro-choice. Emotionally, she
was torn. She couldn't help but think that if she and Rob had ended differently—if
he had beat her or otherwise mistreated her—she might have had an abortion
rather than carry and deliver their child. And then Jill, wonderful Jill, would
never have existed. A horrifying thought.

           
But that didn't explain the
conceptual problems she was having with the chapter. She had been deeply
disturbed by the latest statistics from India: out of every 8,000 abortions in
Bombay, only one of the fetuses was male. The Indian women were having
amniocentesis, and if the child was female they were aborting it.

           
Kara could see that as obstetrical
advances filtered down to the over-the-counter level—now there were home
pregnancy tests, and soon there would be oral abortifacients, and perhaps even
a home amnio kit—the concept of abortion on demand became a two-edged sword. In
India, daughters were expensive to marry off, so people were deciding by the
thousands not to have daughters. What would a trend like that in the Western
countries do to the woman's movement? And what would be the next to disappear?
Freckles? Green eyes? Short stature? Mousy hair color? Where would it end?

           
Maybe that was the approach to take—
Where do we draw the line
!

           
Kara was suddenly excited. If she
got to work right away, she could get a page done before Jill—

           
"Mom! Mom!"

           
Jill came racing into the room and
threw her arms around Kara's waist and hugged her. She was trembling.

           
"Jill, honey! What's the
matter?"

           
"Where were you last night,
Mom? Where'd you go?"

           
"I didn't go anywhere."

           
"Yes, you did! I came looking
for you last night and you weren't here!"

           
"Don't be silly, of course I
was. You must have been dreaming."

           
Kara looked down at Jill. She was
genuinely frightened. She looked as if she was about to cry.

           
"But I wasn't! I thought I
heard a noise and I got scared, so I came in to see you and you weren't here! I
called and called but you wouldn't answer me, and I looked all over for you but
you weren't here! I was so scared! I thought you'd left me!"

           
"I was right there in bed all
the time. Tell me what you did after that."

           
"I went back to my bed and hid
under the covers. I was crying. I… think I fell asleep again."

           
"And then you woke up and now
I'm here. It was a nightmare, Jill. You only
dreamt
you were looking for me." She hugged her daughter
tightly against her. "I'd never go anywhere without you. You know that
don't you?"

           
Jill nodded. "But it seemed so
real
!"

           
"I know." She kissed her.
"The worst ones always do. But it's over now, and I'm here, so why don't
you get into your robe and we'll go make breakfast."

           
"Can we have scrambled
eggs?"

           
"Sure."

           
"Good! I want to try my
chopsticks on them!"

           
As Jill trotted off, Kara sat on the
edge of the bed and fished around for her slippers. The mention of the
chopsticks brought Rob to mind. He was another reason she was glad to be back
at the farm. She'd spent most of the week holding her breath, praying he
wouldn't see the resemblance between himself and Jill. How could he miss it?
But he had, thank God.

           
Well there was no sense in worrying
about what might have happened. Right now, she had breakfast to cook and a book
to write.

           
She found her slippers and was about
to slip them on when she caught a glimpse of the sole of her left foot.

           
It was filthy.

           
She checked the right and found the
same. The bottoms of both of her feet were covered with dirt. Not house dirt,
but outside dirt.

           
Yard dirt.

           
But she'd showered right before bed
last night. Her feet had been clean, she was sure of it. This wasn't possible,
unless…

           
A chill stole over her. Jill's
dream. What if it hadn't been a dream? What if Jill had really come looking for
her and she hadn't been here? But where had she gone? Outside? Barefoot? That
was crazy!

           
Crazy. Dr. Gates had said to let him
know if anything strange happened—blackouts and things like that. Did he mean
sleepwalking, too? Kara had never done that before. At least that she knew.

           
What's
happening to me?

           
Probably nothing. Probably just a
reaction to the stresses of the past week. But if anything like this happened
again, she was going to be on the phone to Dr. Gates immediately. As much as
she disliked the man, he had a head start on any other shrink as far as this
case was concerned.

           
As Kara put her slippers on and
reached for her robe, she realized that the day had suddenly changed. The
morning was no longer as bright. The buoyancy she'd felt on arising had
vanished, replaced by a leaden weight of uncertainty. The Apple no longer
called to her. She sensed it was going to be a very long day. And an even
longer night.

           
"You're spending an awful lot
of time on this jumper, Harris."

           
Rob had been expecting this. He was
surprised he'd been allowed to carry it this far. But the time had come and now
he was sitting across the desk from Detective Lieutenant James Mooney, chief of
Midtown North's detective squad, readying an explanation. Mooney's office was a
walled-off cubicle furnished with a standard issue green metal desk. He had a
window, but like all the other windows in the precinct house, it was covered
with steel mesh. Late afternoon sunlight strained through the mesh.

           
Mooney himself was a balding, jowly,
overweight bulldog who usually had half a cigar stuck in the corner of his
mouth. He seemed tough until he began speaking—he had a tendency to whine. But
he did manage to keep the precinct's detective squad under tight control and
yet remain approachable.

           
Rob had pulled the weekend along
with Mooney. The lieutenant liked to use his Saturdays on duty to close up all
the open files that he could.

           
Rob said, "There's a
possibility she didn't go out that window on her own. She may have had a
push."

           
"Forensics doesn't think
so."